Hamas: Manipulation a Jewish Sin

American Jews can add the "sin of market manipulation" to their transgressions recalled on the Yom Kippur Day of Atonement, according to allegations made by Hamas.

The party, labeled by the United States as an outlawed terrorist organization and formally shunned by the European Union (EU), has blamed the American "Jewish Lobby" for the financial crisis that has gripped the entire world.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum blamed the monetary emergency on "bad administrative and financial management and a bad banking system put into place and controlled by the Jewish lobby." It also charged U.S. President George W. Bush with maintaining a silence about the alleged lobby and allowing it to "retain control of the American government and economy."

The charges by Hamas follow by several days a marked increase of anti-Semitic messages on the internet directed against Jews and blaming them for the collapse of financial institutions.

Hamas has not limited Jewish or Israeli sins to market manipulation. Its Syrian-based leader, Khaled Mashaal, blamed Israel on Monday for leaving kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in captivity. He said Israeli negotiators are guilty of "a lack of reliability."

In an interview with the Italian Le Figaro newspaper, Mashaal accused the negotiators of going over the same issues on which it says there already is agreement. 

Hamas previously has also claimed that Israel's sins include staging the Holocaust by manipulating the mass murder of handicapped Jews in Europe in order to prevent having to support them. The accusationwas aired in a documentary on the Hamas Al Aqsa television station earlier this year.   

The program featured an "expert" named Amin Dabur, head of a "Center for Strategic Research." He explained, "The Israeli Holocaust--the whole thing was a joke and part of the perfect show that Ben Gurion put on."